January 28, 2006

‘Affluent beggars’ an opportunity to examine ourselves

Scott Dalgarno

Forgive me, but I’m feeling yanked in a couple of directions by the current discussion/firefight over Jason Pancoast and Elizabeth Johnson — you remember, the “affluent beggars” who walk our streets and whose story has been spread across the country by the Associated Press.

I know, I know, most people, even in this knee-jerk liberal enclave, think it’s a no-brainer. I hear it every day: “They’re conning us, they’re using their children as pawns. They’re making it hard, if not impossible, for other needy folk in town.” Yeah, I hear you. I’m thinking those things myself. Still, any time I find myself being critical of people who have lived on the street I know it’s time for me to do a little personal inventory.

Here’s what I mean — I look at them and weigh my anger, my skepticism, my concern for other homeless who are NOT sleeping in motel rooms, and I think — okay, this is a test of my compassion, isn’t it?

Believe me, as a local pastor who has talked to hundreds of homeless I’ve had plenty of those kinds of tests. The one I remember best was Jeanette Royer, the woman we called, “the glove lady.” Winter or summer, Jeanette was the lady we all saw waiting for the bus wearing her trademark gloves. She’s told me that she had been homeless since her 20s. She had so little in life when I knew her: her cigarettes, a room at the Bavarian Inn in Phoenix, and free food at C.K. Tiffin’s in Medford. But that was all she wanted. I made my peace with that, but it took a lot of soul searching.

The Dalai Lama of Tibet was once asked who his greatest spiritual teachers were. Without hesitation he said, “The Communist Chinese” (who killed his Buddhist monk brothers and threw him out of his country). It’s easy to say you love “humanity” until people start killing your friends.

And it’s easy to say you feel compassion for the homeless until you meet people like Jason and Elizabeth who’ve been pretty, shall we say, up-front about their situation. For one thing one has to wonder about how much money they’ve really taken in — if you’ve talked at all to Jason, he doesn’t seem the most reliable source for information about anything. And why else would he be living this way unless he had several mild disorders that disqualify him for life in the mainstream? Why else would he have been so “candid” about his situation? Many of the homeless are similar. Few of them could be said to be “high functioning.” They are just more hamstrung by life than most.

As I suggested, the hardest thing for me about this couple is the “kid” thing. I remember when I first met them I felt that they were using the littlest one as a prop. What are those kids going to think about their parents as they grow up, I’m wondering? Won’t they feel they had been used? But then it came to me, is it only the homeless who use their children as props in their own play? Think about it.

When I think about this couple and the righteous indignation I naturally feel about their situation I have to remember the facts of my own life. Let’s face it, most of us are working harder and harder for less and less, while multi-million dollar tax cuts (I’m not making this up) are going to billionaires. Where can we “safely” channel our anger? Scapegoating is an ancient strategy. Maybe that’s not what this is about, but maybe, for some of us, it is.

I remember the story of Donna Beegle of Portland who grew up homeless, in abject poverty. She married the first time at 15. She had four live births by age 21. Only two of those survived. She pulled her life together over two decades, married a second time, and then at the age of thirty-eight her husband suggested they have a baby. She answered him quickly, “I don’t think we can afford it,” and then, she said, she froze. She realized all at once that she had become middle class. Her attitude about life had changed.

Again, I confess that I’m pulled in a couple of directions here. I worry over the negative effect this family is having on the other more conventional homeless, and yet I can’t help but think that, at the end of the day, our discomfort about Jason and Elizabeth may, in some cases, says as much about us as it says about them.

Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Ashland’s First Presbyterian Church.